


Oh, Sing Sweet Nightingale

by landfill_lady



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cinderella Fusion, Dumbledore as a fairy godmother, I'm so trash and I don't even care anymore, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-13 12:19:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5707882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/landfill_lady/pseuds/landfill_lady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Harry Potter Cinderella!AU you never knew you didn't want.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this concept has probably been done already but i don't care, i NEEDED to

The mail on the morning of June the first was unordinary for the household of Lord and Lady Dursley for a number of reasons.

For starters, it was delivered by an owl: a sleek white bird that had landed on the Dursley manor’s front stoop and hooted insistently until Harry answered the door. Harry untied the letter from around the bird’s right leg, where it was fastened with delicate green ribbon, and considered it dubiously. From his few dealings with other wizards, he vaguely recalled that you were supposed to pay owl messengers, and fumbled fruitlessly in his pocket for some change, before realizing there was no leather pouch on the bird’s other leg to put it in.

Still, he felt bad sending the bird off empty-handed. Empty-winged? Either way, it seemed a bit shabby. Setting the letter down on the hardwood floor, Harry motioned for the bird to stay put as he dashed back to the kitchen and tore a bit off of last night’s leftovers - a sumptuous plate of venison bought with the tail-end of his inheritance. The bird’s eyes lit up when he returned with the meat, and it hooted happily as it ate, nuzzling its head up into Harry’s open palm in thanks.

“It’s no trouble, really,” Harry said, glancing nervously over his shoulder and back into the house. He might have felt silly for talking so seriously to a bird, but the owl's eyes were so bright and intelligent that he was almost certain it understood him. “You’d better get going before the Lord and Lady wake up, though. They aren’t too fond of magic.”

The owl inclined its head gravely to Harry, and fluttered off in a blizzard of white feathers. Harry watched it go wistfully, then turned back inside to start making the Dursleys' breakfast.

The Dursleys had let all of their paid servants go three years ago, when money had begun to get tight, so now Harry did most of the work around the mansion. He cooked, he cleaned, he mended clothes and pruned the Lady Petunia’s rosebushes; there were barely enough hours in the day to fit in all of Harry’s tasks, let alone eating and sleeping.

To make matters worse, Harry was strictly forbidden from using magic to lighten his workload. Harry’s aunt and uncle had hated magic for as long as he could remember, and their nephew’s meager gift was no exception. As a child, Harry had been beaten whenever his gift had manifested, and he’d learned to stopper it as best he could in the years since. Occasionally, he used a charm or two to speed up his work, but he was very careful not to let any of the Dursleys catch him at it.

As he cooked breakfast - eggs and bacon from the icebox for Vernon and Dudley, tea and an omelette for Petunia, and assorted scraps for himself - Harry wondered idly about the letter. It was delicately made, and closed with the seal of the royal family of Surrey, but what use did the Serpent King and his family have for the Dursleys? The court at Surrey was well known to be full of magical elitists, and the Dursleys were as non-magical as they came.

Harry was almost tempted to open the envelope and look inside, but he knew that he would be punished severely if Aunt Petunia noticed a broken seal. The envelope was addressed to the inhabitants of Privet Mansion, Little Whinging, but surely it was not intended, even partially, for Harry. What use could the royal family have for an ill-bred, unschooled wizard like himself, after all?

So, instead of sating his curiosity, Harry loaded up three china trays with the Dursleys’ breakfast, adding the letter and a silver letter-opener to the tray bound for the Lady Petunia. He felt safe levitating two of the trays up the stairs as he carried the third: nobody but Harry was ever awake and out of bed at this hour, after all. Once he was upstairs, Harry set the two floating trays gently down outside Vernon and Petunia’s door, carrying the third cautiously into Dudley’s bedroom.

His cousin was soundly asleep, but his upturned nose twitched enthusiastically at the scent of food, and he heaved himself up in bed, eyes still half-closed but mouth already salivating for bacon. Harry set the tray down in front of Dudley’s grasping hands, and left the room in a hurry: Dudley’s eating habits were never a pleasant sight.

He carried the other two trays into Vernon and Petunia’s room next. His aunt was already awake, and her grey eyes followed him shrewdly as he made his way over to the side of the enormous bed, balancing a tray carefully in each hand.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Set it down, boy,” she snapped, gesturing impatiently at the empty stretch of bed in front of her, indented by her knobby knees. Next to her, her husband gave an enormous snort and awoke, rubbing his eyes blearily.

“Whazzat? Breakfast?” he said, wiping a thin trail of spittle off his cheek as Harry set the trays down in front of him and his wife. Meanwhile, Petunia’s eyes had fixed almost immediately on the letter propped against her teapot.

“What’s this?” she asked sharply, prodding at the letter with her butter knife as though it might attack her. Harry shrugged, anxious to leave the room and begin his daily tasks, but Petunia waved one bony hand at him as she stared at the envelope, a wordless order to stay put.

“Look, Vernon, it’s from those dreadful warlocks up at the castle,” she said spitefully, examining the envelope’s green seal. Her husband only grunted, attention focused solely on the plate before him. Lady Petunia spared him an annoyed glance before turning her attention back to the letter.

“Open it, boy,” she commanded, waving Harry over from where he stood unobtrusively against the wall. He opened the envelope with care, slicing through the whisper-thin parchment with the letter opener and drawing out the card inside. He proffered it to his aunt, but she shook her head vigorously, looking for all the world as though Harry was holding the most contagious scrap of paper she’d ever seen.

“Read it out,” she said imperiously, eyes firmly on Harry as she began eating her omelette.

Harry squinted through his cracked glasses at the paper, which was entirely written in the same ornate, curly green script as the address on the envelope. With difficulty, he began:

“ _To whom it may concern:_

_The inhabitants of your household are hereby invited to a ball at Malfoy Castle, on June the Fifth, to celebrate the Dragon Prince’s seventeenth birthday. Young men and women of pleasing physical appearance and strong magical talent are especially encouraged to attend, although all well-bred visitors are welcome._

_Yours courteously,_

_L.M_.”

Petunia gave a little shriek as the letter concluded and batted her husband enthusiastically about the elbow, upsetting her breakfast tray in the process. The Lady hardly seemed to notice, although Harry whisked the tray off of the bedcover as quickly as possible and replaced the blanket with shaking hands. He’d never seen Aunt Petunia in such a state before, and was sure that, whatever it meant, it could be nothing good.

The lady snatched the letter up from where Harry had left it lying, and waved it enthusiastically under her husband’s nose.

“Do you hear that, Vernon?” she squawked exultantly. “The Dragon Prince is searching for a spouse!”

At this pronouncement, Lord Vernon finally shifted his attention away from his prodigious meal and towards his wife. His expression morphed from a small moue of distaste to a wide, unsettling grin, which was even more disturbing than his wife’s pinched excitement.

“Dudley!” he hollered. “Get in here, boy!”

A couple of moments later, Dudley Dursley’s massive, pink form appeared in the doorway. “What is it, dad?” he said, his lower lip sticking out petulantly. “I wasn’t done with breakfast.”

“Breakfast can wait,” Vernon said, gesturing impatiently for Harry to remove his tray from the bed. “You can eat all the breakfast you want once you’re married to Prince Draco, my boy.”

Dudley’s expression veered from petulant annoyance to sharp distaste in a split second. “Draco Malfoy?” he said, shocked. “But he’s a _wizard_ , Dad!”

“Pish posh,” Vernon said. “The boy’s a wizard, true, but he’s also the wealthiest eligible bachelor in Surrey, and he’s looking for a spouse. Which _will_ be you.”

Looking at Dudley’s gobsmacked expression, Harry could sympathize. Vernon and Petunia had been such staunch opponents of magic, for so many years, that this abrupt about-face was akin to waking up one day to find that the sky was purple. But it did make sense, in a twisted sort of way. The Dursleys were, at heart, opportunists. And if there was one thing Vernon and Petunia Dursley hated more than magic, it was poverty.

Ever since they had taken Harry in as a baby, his aunt and uncle had been living off his parents’ money, but even James and Lily Potter’s seemingly endless supply of gold had run out eventually, and for the past year or two, they’d been scraping by selling off priceless family treasures. Finding any sort of job seemed to be anathema to the Dursleys, so the only way left to earn money was to marry Dudley off to somebody rich.

In reality, this would be quite hard to achieve, given Dudley’s piglike appearance and less-than-ideal personality, but in Lord and Lady Dursley’s eyes, their wonderful son was a perfect match for any wealthy nobleman or -woman.

As Harry ruminated, Dudley had snatched up the letter in both hands and began reading it, frowning and mouthing the more difficult words under his breath.

“But dad,” he said finally,“it says they want wizards and witches. I can’t do magic.” Vernon waved his hand airily.

“So you’ll learn some card tricks. It shouldn’t be too hard to fool some stupid warlock into marrying you.”

Dudley’s brow furrowed, and he adopted the pained, constipated look that meant he was trying to think. “Harry could do it for me,” he suggested finally. “Since he’s magic and all. We could bring him along as a servant.”

“Over my dead body!” Vernon thundered, raising one meaty finger in the air. “The boy is trouble enough, without bringing him into contact with… those people. No, Dudley my boy, you’re just going to have to pretend as best you can.”

And with that, the matter was settled.

“What are you still doing here, boy?” Vernon snapped at Harry, which meant he was once again in a good mood. “Go downstairs and polish my boots!”

Harry nodded obediently, gathering the Dursleys’ breakfast trays and beginning the trek downstairs. He had a vague idea that things were about to get very interesting around the household.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sorry,” Harry said, staring disbelievingly from the hat, to the bread, to the man. “Who exactly are you?”
> 
> “Your fairy godfather, of course,” the old man said casually, sweeping his cloak off to reveal a comically oversized pair of what looked like bees’ wings protruding out of a violently yellow doublet. “Albus Dumbledore, at your service.”

The next four days passed in a blur of anticipation, at least for the Dursleys. For his own part, Harry was run off his feet with so many tasks that he could hardly stop for breath.

Lady Petunia had him clean the entire mansion, from top to bottom. When Harry pointed out (quite reasonably, he thought) that there was no way the royal family was actually going to _see_ the house, she frowned severely and ordered him to scrub the sitting-room floor. Again.

“We can’t look like slobs when the prince comes here asking for our blessing!” she shrilled. “I won’t have your laziness ruining Dudders’ chance at royalty.”

Privately, Harry thought a dirty house would be the least of Dudley’s obstacles, but he elected not to make any further comments, mostly out of a burning desire not to get stuck scrubbing out chamberpots for the rest of his natural life.

Once the mansion had been cleaned to Lady Petunia’s exacting standards, Harry’s tasks turned to tailoring. The Dursleys were no longer rich enough to commission new clothing for a ball, so older finery had to be repurposed, which was no small task considering the amount of weight Dudley put on in the average month.

Harry was decent at sewing, but not especially talented, and his fingers were raw and pricked through with holes by the time the alterations were finished to Petunia’s satisfaction. Still, Harry had no time to rest: the second the last loose thread was snipped off, he was set to polishing boots.

Finally, the fateful day came, to Harry’s infinite relief, and Petunia, Vernon, and Dudley departed for Malfoy Castle, leaving Harry behind with three equally mistrustful backwards glances and an exhaustive list of chores to be completed upon their return.

With a bit of magical help, the tasks were soon completed, and Harry found himself at loose ends as the sun began to go down. When the mansion’s rusty doorbell rang at a quarter of nine, he fairly sprang to the door, even though, in Harry’s experience, no one even vaguely pleasant ever voluntarily approached the Dursley residence.

It was with some surprise, therefore, that he swung the door open to reveal a wizened old man in a tattered purple cloak. The man’s posture was hunched, and his cloak grimy where he gripped it about him, but the pair of twinkling blue eyes that peered out under his hat-brim prevented Harry from feeling anything like fear or pity.

“Spare some bread and water for an old man?” the man said, spreading one arthritic hand in supplication.

“Yeah, all right,” Harry said, half out of compassion - eyes aside, the man looked to be in a pretty bad way - and half out of the vicious enjoyment of picturing the fit the Dursleys would throw if they discovered a vagabond had been in their home.

The man nodded his head in thanks and followed Harry back into the mansion’s kitchen. By the time Harry turned around to offer him some tea, he was already munching happily away at a piece of toast, spread liberally with butter and honey. This was perplexing for a couple of reasons: there hadn’t been any fresh bread in the house in weeks, first of all, much less honey. The man didn’t seem to notice Harry’s confused gaze, though; he was too busy surveying the kitchen with his pale, twinkling eyes. He looked oddly nostalgic.

“Nice place,” the man remarked contemplatively, removing his ratty pointed hat and setting it in midair, where it bobbed gently. “Although I must say, it was a bit nicer in my day.”

“Sorry,” Harry said, staring disbelievingly from the hat, to the bread, to the man. “Who exactly are you?”

“Your fairy godfather, of course,” the old man said casually, sweeping his cloak off to reveal a comically oversized pair of what looked like bees’ wings protruding out of a violently yellow doublet. “Albus Dumbledore, at your service.”

Harry squinted. “I have a fairy godfather?”

The man nodded, smiling. “I’m here to take you away from this life of drudgery, Harry.”

Harry frowned. “No offense, but couldn’t you have taken me away from this life of drudgery a couple of years ago? Living with the Dursleys hasn’t exactly been a bundle of laughs.”

Albus Dumbledore fidgeted uncomfortably with his beard. “My apologies, Harry. I’ve been a bit… preoccupied for the past couple of years.”

“ _Preoccupied?”_

The old man looked down at his shoes. “My ex-lover turned evil and attempted to destroy the entirety of Eastern Europe. I was forced to stop him. In the process, I may have- lapsed a bit in my duties.”

Harry wasn’t sure exactly how to respond to that, but he figured it was as good an excuse as any.

“So, how exactly are you rescuing me?” he asked hopefully, and the twinkle returned to Dumbledore’s eyes.

“I’m sending you to an event, where you can meet other wizards,” the fairy man said craftily. “You’ve been divested too long from your own heritage, Harry, and I imagine there will be a plethora of opportunities for you there.”

“You can’t mean you’re sending me to the _ball,_ ” Harry asked incredulously.

Dumbledore was, tellingly, silent.

“I can’t dance,” Harry protested, horrified. His fairy godfather merely smiled.

“Nonsense, Harry! Anyone can dance, if only they put their mind to it.”

“I don’t have any ball clothes! I’m not even a proper wizard,” Harry said, although he had the sinking feeling that none of these quibbles were going to bother Dumbledore overmuch.

As though he’d been waiting for just such a cue, the old man drew a small velvet bag out of his pocket and proffered it to Harry with a courtly flourish. When Harry refused to touch it, his fairy godfather shook his head wistfully and reached his own hand into the bag. It sank in almost to the elbow, and Dumbledore began rooting around industriously. 

Harry stared. The bag was about the size of his hand; nothing should have fit in there up to the elbow. The bag didn’t even _bulge._

“Aha,” Dumbledore said triumphantly, as his hand emerged from the pouch clutching a wrinkled mass of embroidered cherry-red velvet.

“Your late father’s,” he explained, setting it in midair in front of Harry. Invisible hands shook the wrinkles out of the fabric, which resolved itself into a dusty but handsome doublet as Dumbledore thrust his arm back into the pouch. 

“Yes, that should do nicely,” Dumbledore muttered, pulling out matching hose and a set of fine boots to go with the doublet.

Before Harry knew it, he was dressed up in all the trappings of nobility, even his familiar clunky glasses replaced with a delicate pair wrought of what looked like pure silver. Feeling unusually self-conscious, he tugged at one earlobe as Dumbledore stood back and surveyed his work.

“Are you done now?” he asked.

Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled back at him, as irritatingly fey as ever. “Almost.”

This time, when Dumbledore thrust the magic pouch at him, Harry took it, overcome by curiosity. First, he drew out what felt like a large bolt of fabric, but found he could see neither the cloth nor his hand. “An invisibility cloak,” Dumbledore explained, smiling. “Yours by birth. I hope you will use it well.”

Harry thrust it back into the bag quickly: he liked having his appendages where he could see him, for the most part.

“Thank you,” he said uncertainly, and made to put the bag down until Dumbledore shook his head and motioned for him to continue searching.

Harry had to fish around for a while before he found the next present: a long, thin box made of peeling pasteboard. He drew it out of the magic bag with a mounting sense of wonder. When he lifted the lid, Harry gasped out loud.

“A wand,” he breathed, drinking in the sight of the long, slender rod of polished wood. 

Dumbledore nodded. “It has been meant for you from birth. Go on, try it out.”

Harry reached into the box gingerly, and drew the wand out with careful, shaking hands. It was comfortably warm to the touch, and sparked a bit as he lifted it out into the air. It was scary, but at the same time, the wand didn’t feel foreign: instead, Harry felt as though he was touching a part of himself for the very first time.

“You probably shouldn’t go around waving it around until you’ve learned how to use it,” Dumbledore said vaguely, casting an approving eye over the sparks showering out from Harry’s wand onto the floor. “But you’re a smart boy; I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it quickly.”

“Thank you,” Harry said hoarsely. His fairy godfather waved his hand airily, as though what he’d just given Harry was no big deal.

“Now, I believe you’re ready for the ball,” he said, winking at Harry. “Are you set to go, my boy?”

“Now? But Malfoy Castle is hours away,” Harry said. “We’d be hours late, even in the fastest carriage.”

Dumbledore looked at Harry as though he were a beloved pet - cute, but not overly intelligent - and took his arm with one firm, wrinkled hand. The kitchen disappears around them with a sickening _pop,_ and seconds later, Harry was clinging to Dumbledore’s side, head reeling, in the imposing shadow of Malfoy Palace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the wand wasn't supposed to be a phallic metaphor i swear
> 
> _it's not my fault guys_


End file.
